


I'd Give It All For You

by seekeronthepath



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Break Up, Insecurity, M/M, Rebuilt Hale House, Songfic, Stiles and Derek love each other but they don't know how to relationship, communication problems
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-03
Updated: 2015-07-03
Packaged: 2018-04-07 12:34:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4263465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seekeronthepath/pseuds/seekeronthepath
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Stiles left, Derek demolished the old Hale House. No-one asked, but if they had, Derek would have said he was fine. </p><p>Stiles and Derek…ended…almost a month before the start of college, and Stiles couldn’t bear to stay. He took a road trip instead, making his slow and winding way to Columbia. He didn’t talk to the others, but he called his dad every week. They didn’t talk about it, but if they had, Stiles would have said he was fine.</p><p>(They weren't fine.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'd Give It All For You

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the song "I'd Give It All For You" from the musical Songs for a New World - you can listen to it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iy2skMYODwc  
> Lyrics are in italics and are not essential for the story.
> 
> Un-beta'd, and written in between midnight and dawn, so it's not the most polished thing I've ever done.

_I had a house while you were gone._   
_The week after you left me I found a couple acres near Sarilla Park._   
_I had a house while you were gone._   
_A house with silver shutters, and a driveway laid in marble, and thousands of rooms to fill, and miles of space to fly._   
_And I tried to believe it: it was better without you._   
_I was safer alone._

\-----

After Stiles left, Derek demolished the old Hale House. Every time he looked at it, he heard Stiles telling him “Dude, living in the dilapidated ruins of your family home is seriously unhealthy. Just because you’re a creature of the night doesn’t mean your life has to be a horror movie 24/7.” Stiles had said it a couple of years ago, but the memory lingered.

He started planning a new house about a month later. It started small – master bedroom and a couple of guest rooms; two bathrooms; a comfortable, but not elaborate, kitchen; a combined living/dining room; and a shelter outside for the Camaro. It didn’t stay that way. By the time it was built, it had six bedrooms (Derek, Isaac, Boyd and Erica, Scott and Allison, Lydia and Jackson, Peter); four bathrooms (a large one near the back door designed primarily to accommodate emergency first aid – Stiles had always hated cleaning blood off carpet – a half-bath near the living room, and two upstairs); a large kitchen; dining room, living room, _and_ library (at Lydia’s insistence); a basement armoury/panic room; and a garage that would fit three cars.

Eight months later, the house was nearly finished, and Stiles was still gone. Some of the others had gone away for college too, of course, but they came back every break. Stiles didn’t.

No-one asked, but if they had, Derek would have said he was fine. The break-up had been mutual, if not exactly pleasant. Stiles didn’t need to be tied down to the pack. He deserved to make the most of his potential, to go out and explore. (And Derek was better off, too. Safer. Love was dangerous, and he’d never deserved it anyway.)

\-----

_I'd give it all for you -_ _I'd give it all for you by my side once more._   
_I'd give it all to hold you again, to feel I'm completed, to know there and then that all that I needed was you to fight the fear._

\-----

But that didn’t mean his heart didn’t ache at night, as he lay in his bed alone. It didn’t mean he didn’t feel Stiles’ absence whenever the pack was together. It didn’t mean that he didn’t remember, over and over again, the way Stiles had always been that one in a million chance that made everything turn out alright.

But Derek was fine.

\-----

 

 

\-----

_I took a trip while I was gone._   
_I cashed in all my savings, and bought an Eldorado, and drove to Tennessee._   
_I took a trip while I was gone._   
_I drove across the country, and stopped at lots of diners, and stared at a million stars, and thought I could touch the sky._   
_And I tried to believe it: it was better without you._   
_I was finally free._

\-----

Stiles and Derek…ended…almost a month before the start of college, and Stiles couldn’t bear to stay. He took a road trip instead, making his slow and winding way to Columbia.

He passed town after town just like Beacon Hills in every way, except completely different. He visited cities, too, but the noise was lonelier than silence, so he never stayed long. Sometimes he stopped on the highway in the middle of the night just to look at the stars. He watched the moon wax, and wane again, and he wondered if there were ‘wolves in the places he went, if those sleepy un/familiar towns had their own histories of ‘animal’ attacks. He didn’t ask.

He didn’t talk to the others, but he called his dad every week. They didn’t talk about it, but if they had, Stiles would have said he was fine. He and Derek just weren’t going to work out. Derek had issues, _boy_ did he have issues, and he needed space to deal with those. He didn’t need Stiles poking at his past. (And Stiles needed to figure out his own place, away from the pack. He’d spent years following Lydia around like a puppy – trailing along after the others wasn’t any better.)

\-----

_I'd give it all for you - I'd give it all for you by my side once more._   
_I'd give it ‘cause the mountains I climb get higher and higher; I'm running from time, and walking through fire, and dreams just don't come true._

\-----

But that didn’t mean he didn’t miss him, them, home. It didn’t mean he wasn’t desperately lonely as he fell asleep in crappy hotel after crappy hotel. It didn’t mean he didn’t think of the way Derek had made college seem trivial whenever the world seemed huge and frightening.

But Stiles was fine.

\-----

 

 

\-----

_God knows it's easy to hide - easy to hide from the things that you feel - and harder to blindly trust what you can't understand._

\-----

Derek had never understood Stiles. He didn’t think it was possible. There was too much to the boy, too many layers of contradictory emotions, too many strands of thought weaving in and out and around each other, just too much…everything. He didn’t understand _why_ Stiles had wanted him in the first place – an angry, violent, wrong, failure of an alpha, whose looks only made up for it in the most casual of interactions – or why Stiles had been so insistent, coming back week after week with home-made food and superhero movies while Derek growled at him as if the human contact wasn’t utterly bewildering; or why Stiles had been so careful with him, asking for permission before every new touch, deftly steering conversations away from the more painful parts of Derek’s past and towards good memories, holding him like he was precious. It had been terrifying, sometimes, the way Stiles had made Derek feel.

\-----

 _God knows it's easy to run - easy to run from the people you love - and harder to stand and fight for the things you believe_.

\-----

 Stiles had never known what his place in the pack was. Was it Scott’s best friend and hanger-on? Was it research consultant? Bait? He always knew (hoped) they needed him, but he didn’t know if _they_ knew. When he was…with Derek, it was easier. No-one could question his presence at pack meetings as Derek’s…whatever (and no, they hadn’t ever talked about a word), in the way he sometimes felt they had before. After the fight, though, Stiles couldn’t face them. He couldn’t bear to find out that he was _only_ tolerated because he was Derek’s. He knew (hoped) that they needed him. But he had wanted to be _wanted._

_\-----_

 

 

\-----

_Nothing about us was perfect or clear, but when when paradise calls me, I'd rather be here._   
_There's something between us that nobody else needs to see._

\-----

They’d been a mess, the pair of them. Stiles, who talked too much about everything except what was truly important, and Derek, who barely spoke at all. Stiles, with the insecurity born of years of rejection, and Derek, with the uncertainty that came from the abuse of She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, followed by years of too-careless partners. Stiles, all too aware of his inexperience, and Derek, used to being just a pretty face. Their relationship was like stumbling through treacherous woods in the dark, searching fruitlessly and without a guide for something they knew was there but never found. They’d been a mess.

But a year after it ended, when everyone except Stiles came home for the summer, when the house was full of the scents and sounds of a cohesive pack, when word had gotten around that Beacon Hills was protected by the Hales again, when the Argent-Hale truce had finally matured into an Argent-Hale alliance, Derek still found himself thinking longingly of those desperate, awkward, stumbling nights that he and Stiles had stolen in between the anxiety of figuring out each new supernatural problem and the terror of fixing them.

And a year after it ended, when Stiles was working in a bookshop in New York over the summer, when he’d gotten through freshman year with a 3.8 GPA, when he was casually dating a guy who thought his flailing was cute and his body was hot, he still lay awake some nights thinking of those calm-in-the-storm moments after he cleaned Derek up from a fight, when they’d lain curled up together as Derek healed himself and stole the pain from Stiles’ bruises (there were always bruises) and woke each other up from the nightmares.

The thing about Derek and Stiles, when they’d been Derek-and-Stiles, was that they didn’t show it. The pack knew, of course. Keeping secrets from each other was hard enough, and they’d never particularly wanted to hide this one. But Derek and Stiles were only really Derek-and-Stiles when it was just the two of them. It was too precious to share, so they didn’t.

\-----

 

 

\-----

_There were oceans to cross  (There were mountains to conquer),_   
_And I stood on the shore  (And I stood on the cliff),_   
_And the second before I jumped, I knew where I needed to be._

\-----

When Scott reported mournfully that the Sheriff had told him Stiles wasn’t coming home for Christmas _again_ this year, something in Derek snapped. Or maybe shattered. He couldn’t _be_ here, with his house and his pack and his truce and his peaceful territory, he couldn’t do it anymore. It wasn’t _right_. It wasn’t whole. It wasn’t _home_ without Stiles, it was…hollow.

When Jake asked Stiles to move in with him, something in Stiles crumbled. Because it was _good_ , with Jake. It was loving, and warm, and supportive, and healthy, and everything that a relationship was supposed to be. He could move in with Jake, and in five years they’d probably get married, and somewhere down the line they’d buy a place together and maybe have kids together, and it would be…good. It would never be desperate, or death-defying, or that last gulp of air before drowning. It would never be as _real_ as those months with Derek had been. And Stiles…Stiles said no.

When Derek got to New York (and oh, how many painful memories were there in that city), when he arrived at the address the Sheriff (after an interrogation that had made Derek all but cringe) had given him, he stood outside Stiles’ door for a whole ten minutes before he did anything. Then he heard a muffled sob from inside the apartment and nearly left altogether. Stiles had always kept his vulnerable moments well hidden – surely he would hate to have Derek see him crying now. But Derek _couldn’t_ leave Stiles when he was hurting. So he knocked. And after a minute of angry surprise, Stiles let him in.

\-----

 

 

\-----

_I gave it all for you - I gave it all for you by my side once more._   
_I gave it ‘cause it's harder to touch the things that are dearer;_   
_I love you too much to trust something clearer._   
_I know I fell too far, but here you are._

\-----

In the time that followed, Stiles yelled, and Derek yelled, and Stiles cried, and Derek cried, but it was the crashing together of two waves that cancelled each other out, and by the end of it all, they were left holding each other close and murmuring truths that had torn them each apart.

“I always thought you deserved better than me.”

“I never really believed I fit.”

“I don't deserve to be loved."

“No-one had ever loved me and I’d more or less given up hope.”

“As long as you were with us, with me, you were in danger.”

“I could never tell if you were serious about me.”

“Everyone I care about dies.”

“I never understood what you saw in me.”

“I never understood what you saw in me, either.”

“I’d only just started to believe you’d want me to stay when you made me leave.”

“I felt like I was holding you back, and I thought you’d resent me, us, if we didn’t let you go.”

“I’ve missed the pack so much, but I didn’t want to risk them, you, rejecting me.”

“We miss you, all the time. I miss you even more though.”

“I love you, and I never said it because I couldn’t bear you not saying it back.”

“I love you, and I never said it because my love is worse than worthless.”

“It isn’t. I love you.”

“I love you.”

**Author's Note:**

> What happened next? Why did they fight in the first place? I honestly don't know.
> 
> This song came up on my ipod and it just seemed like an incredibly good fit for a relationship between Stiles and Derek, which is part of why I've included the complete lyrics. The other part is that, as far as I could figure, all the lines are equally important to the story.
> 
> Your comments and kudos are deeply appreciated.


End file.
